Manage Your Social Media Efforts with Ease

Social Media is a great way for small businesses to improve their brand awareness and at the same time improve their level of customer service. Today, more than any time in the past, it is imperative to stay close to your customers and to monitor their feelings about your products and services. Also, it is important to stay in touch with what your customers are thinking about and doing!

Using social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter can help but, how do you use and manage them? These social networks are very powerful, low cost and extremely effective at keeping you in touch with the needs and interests of your customers and industry. However, many of you fail to understand or to take advantage of these technology initiatives.

Why you may ask? It is probably because you don’t know how to use these tools efficiently. For many it seems to be so confusing and for others they cannot see spending the time to stay informed on what is going on in the social network world and at the same time contribute and share tweets, photos, videos and links.

There are some great tools that can help and outlined below are a few I would suggest you consider:

A couple of ones I would suggest checking out are: TweekDeck and Seesmic. These are fantastic applications that allow small businesses to use Personal Computers, Smartphone’s and PADs to search and seek out what people are saying about their businesses and to join in on the conversations. Both of these products are so easy to use and are available for free. The idea, behind these tools, is to make it easy for a business or person to connect and share relevant content across all the major social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and others; all within one application eliminating the time consuming efforts involved with posting to each social network site separately!

So if you think you would like to use social media more effectively and efficiently to communicate with your customers and prospects consider using one of these tools mentioned above. And, if you don’t have a Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook account for your business, you absolutely must!

Shaun

Cloud Computing has Started a Revolution

Over the last few months I have made mention of the Cloud and how it will become a major talk track among businesses in 2011. As a follow up to my previous articles (outlined in the list below) I would like to share some interesting marketing points that EMC has been using in their advertising about their Cloud Strategy!

• "Cloud Printing Services" Reprographics on the Cloud  
• 2011 the Year to Emphasize your Managed Services  
• PlanWell Collaborate & AbacusPCR Awarded BERTL's BEST  
• HP and Canon Announce Game Changing Wide Format Technical MFP Devices.
• On the Road with Fellow Reprographers (Part 1) BIM  

EMC has been advertising almost every week in Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek throughout 2011. Not only has EMC been evangelizing about the Cloud but many of the other leading technology players like Microsoft, IBM, HP, Oracle, Google, Amazon, Dell and Apple are too!

But this one advertising article I read, in the March 28- April 3, 2011 edition of BusinessWeek really summed up what the Cloud means for businesses and why it will be the next big shift in technology for the masses.

EMC begins their article by reminding the reader that all of us are using the Cloud today whether we realize it or not. The ad states “You probably did some cloud computing this week. The last time you posted a photo to Facebook, sent an email with Google account or bought something on Amazon.com, you put a finger in the cloud.”

The article goes on to describe what Cloud computing is and sights the key advantages of Cloud Computing and why it is such an exciting platform and that is should not be overlook by anyone especially businesses. Some of the advantages of Cloud Computing is highlighted below.

Key Benefits of the Cloud:

• Pay as You Go 
• Leaner and Greener 
• Cloud is Power to the People

 Terms you will want to get become familiar with:

• SaaS (Software as a Service or Software on Demand) 
• Paas (Platform as a Service) 
• IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

If you want to read the full article/advertisement please click the link here or read the March 28th edition of BusinessWeek or, better yet, subscribe to the Cloud based version of BusinessWeek by using the application called Zinio. Zinio is my preferred app to use with my iPad, iPhone and PC as it is one of the best ways to read your favorite magazines (electronically) and have them available anytime and anyplace.

So do not overlook the opportunities to position your business on the cloud and be prepared to talk to your customers intelligently about your ability to offer solutions that involve the cloud in some way or another. If you don’t someone else will.

Sincerely …..Shaun Meany